


what i always think about

by adykera



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Parental Riza Hawkeye, Trauma, and all that sort of stuff, barely ship stuff, but kind of mentioned, just the shared trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adykera/pseuds/adykera
Summary: After being hurt (again), Edward and Alphonse have been stuck in Riza Hawkeye's care while Ed waits to get his new automail. It turns out he and Riza have a lot in common with their sleepless nights.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 7
Kudos: 97





	what i always think about

**Author's Note:**

> includes nightmares, trauma being revisited, grotesque descriptions, basically stuff you'd see in the actual series.

“Fullmetal! Are you okay?”

Edward opens his heavy eyes, a blur of dark colors in front of his face. The ringing in his ears distorts the sounds around him – yelling, maybe? Crashing?

Colonel Mustang’s face gets close enough to Ed’s for him to finally realize who has been talking to him. “Can you hear me?”

Ed groans and presses a hand to Mustang’s chest in a feeble attempt to push him away. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says with a frown.

“Can you sit up?”

Ed squishes his eyes shut. “God, my head hurts.” He vaguely feels his body being moved, his head snapping back as he’s lifted off the ground.

“Just keep your eyes closed, Edward,” another voice says quietly by his ear. “You’re going to be okay.”

* * *

When he wakes up again, his dark surroundings have changed to overly bright and glaring. He props himself up on his elbows and squints down at his chest – covered with a cheap paper hospital dress – and his metal arm. He wiggles the fingers a little, making sure everything is still working.

Before he can give himself a moment to process what the _hell_ just happened, Lieutenant Hawkeye enters his room, her hand dropping from the gun strapped to her waist. She breathes a small sigh of relief at the boy finally being awake. After a whole day of sleeping and several stitches to various body parts, she began to worry about Edward. He seemed to be the type of kid that would be able to stand back up after any injury or disaster, and honestly, after a while without his annoying complaints and arguing, things became too quiet for her liking. She nearly smiles at his dramatic groaning when she sits down at the end of his bed.

He presses a hand to his head, feeling the gauze wrapped around it. “What happened?”

“There was a bombing at Central,” Riza replies, her brown eyes searing into his golden ones. “Fortunately, no one died, but we haven’t figured out who it was yet.”

Ed frowns. “Where’s Al?”

“He’s been in the library waiting for you to wake up. I can go get him if you like.”

He leans forward and rests his forehead in his hands. “No, it’s not urgent; it’s fine.”

“Okay,” Riza says, patting his leg. “I’ll tell the doctor you’re awake now.” She stands up and has grabbed the door when a sharp inhale swivels her head back to Ed’s direction.

He looks up at her slowly, eyes wide. “Winry is going to kill me.”

Riza looks down at Ed’s bed, the single foot peeking through the end of the blankets. “Oh, I’m sorry, Ed, I figured you’d noticed.”

He lets out a yell of defeat and rips back the blanket. Sure enough, the space below his mid-thigh is completely gone. Even the metal connected to his actual flesh has been damaged, and gauze is taped to the skin above. His automail – it’s been completely demolished.

“What happened?” Ed asks again, this time his voice an octave higher.

“It looked like when the blast went off, part of the ceiling fell and a beam landed on your automail.” She attempts a pitying smile. “You’re lucky it wasn’t the other leg, Ed.”

He slams his head back into the bed and covers his face with his hands. He’s so _stupid_. He can’t even remember the reason he went to Central in the first place. Obviously, it wasn’t important enough to lose a limb, _and_ his pride while it got fixed. He can already feel the dread of calling Winry to ask her to make a new one. To start a new leg completely from scratch _and_ to fix up the metal connecting his body to the automail – that would take way too much of his and Winry’s time. He can already hear her screams – _“Edward! I just fixed your arm, you idiot! I told you to be careful -!”_

“I’ve already called your automail mechanic and she’s begun working on a new leg for you. She said she’ll come up and install it for you as soon as she’s finished,” Riza says before the boy can work himself into a panic attack. “She said it might take a while though.”

Edward exhales and nods. “I can deal with that.” Riza watches him for a moment more, anticipating another freak out. “When do I get to go home?” he asks after a moment of silence.

“Oh, you two aren’t going home right now.”

“What?” he screeches.

“I’m not having one child _without a body_ take care of another child who is also disabled and injured. Giving you two an apartment alone in the first place was a bad idea,” she says, her face back into her usual stoic position.

“What? Me and Al can take care of -“

“Edward. You’re not going home.”

At that, Hawkeye slips out the door and resumes her watch, hand propped on her pistol once again.

* * *

“Do we _have_ to do this?” Edward whines as they cross the threshold of Hawkeye’s apartment.

Alphonse drops their single suitcase, half full of books and half of random clothes he grabbed from their drawers. Riza closes the door behind them and instantly pulls her hair out from the knot she always keeps it in. She grabs the single suitcase and walks quickly off down the hallway.

“This way, guys.”

Alphonse steps forward as Riza disappears down the hall, but stops when his brother doesn’t appear at his side.

“Brother?”

Edward sits back, his arms crossed over his chest. “This is humiliating.”

“A wheelchair is not humiliating. You were in one before for a long time!” he says, going behind Ed and pushing him forward. “It’s not permanent.”

Ed stays quiet and lets himself be pushed down the hallway, face burning red the entire time.

“Okay, this is your room. Get comfortable, unpack, do whatever you want.” Riza looks down at the black and white dog circling around her legs. “And this is Black Hayate. Be nice to him.”

Alphonse smiles – the best he can with his steel face – and pets the dog while Edward scoots forward, a frown plastered to his face. _This is so stupid. I can take care of myself. I don’t even need this dumb wheelchair_.

“And Edward,” Riza starts, seemingly reading his mind, “don’t start trying to hop around instead of using your chair. You’re going to hurt your other leg that way.”

Ed grimaces in response and throws his body onto the bed, his red coat tangling around his torso.

“I’ll get dinner for us soon too. Just rest in the meantime,” she says, nearly a smile crossing her face before she closes their door.

* * *

After eating Xingese food from a place across the street together on the floor of Riza’s living room, Edward heads to bed, his forehead and leg hurting just enough to irritate him. Seeing the lieutenant clothed like a normal person, hair down, eating cheap food with them like everything was perfectly normal – it made his chest ache a little for the far off memories of their mother. He wonders what they’d all be doing right now if their mother had never gotten sick, if Ed and Al had their bodies still, if their dad stayed around. Would they even care about alchemy? Would they be eating Xingese food on the floor tonight too?

While Alphonse works his way through the books Riza has in her office, Ed sits still, completely upright and awake in the bed, sheets wrapped around his leg. He gently glides his fingers through his hair, undoing the braid down his back and lies down, eyes glaring into the ceiling. Somehow, someone else’s bed always feels cooler, softer. Still, he feels a bundle of discomfort and nervousness tighten in his middle.

Edward turns to his side and stares out the window across from him. Night in the city is so much brighter than at home. He wonders what Winry and Granny are doing right now. Are they looking at the stars that he can’t see in the light pollution soaking into the sky? Is Winry still working? Granny is probably asleep by now. Unless she’d woken up and grabbed a cup of tea. He remembers bumping into her the first night of trying to sleep when he’d gotten his automail installed. The burning ache of the metal on his skin wouldn’t let him sleep, but he hadn’t wanted to bother Al. Alphonse already had it worse; he didn’t need Edward’s pain added on top of it all.

They had tea together in the middle of the night. She held him while he sobbed silently into her shoulder. They never talked about it again.

His fatigue pushes his eyelids down, but the drumming of his heart can’t quiet enough for him to rest. Just as he begins to sleep, he hears the blast of the bombing again and awakes with a start. A miniature nightmare almost, but his real life. Over and over again.

He rolls over to his stomach and presses a pillow over his head with a groan. His metal arm creaks with each movement, and he can just barely hear the clanking of Al’s armor in the room next to his.

The _guilt_ of it all.

Edward falls asleep eventually, pillow still shoved over his head, and sheets kicked off the bed.

In the blackness of sleep arises images of his brother, eyes wide in fear at the monster they’d created when they were young. Their mother, mutilated and dying again and _again_ , her ribs poking through her flesh, her hair coming from her scalp like oil. His father, leaving the two of them, watching as their mother’s grotesque form wrap them in her embrace. He hears more far off bombs shatter the windows of their house and tries to shield Al’s small body. Ed tries to pull back from their mother, push her away from them as their father watches uselessly, and when he looks back, it’s the perfect image of their mother again. The boys look up at her, tears streaming down their faces.

_Why did you kill me?_

Edward wakes up screaming, instantly throwing himself into a sitting position, arms wrapped like a corpse’s around his chest. He clutches at his shirt, fingernails digging into his skin.

The bedroom door opens and light shines through, but his eyes stay downward at his single leg. A rough arm pulls him into an embrace and he lets his head rest against the shoulder, eyes still wide open and breath still rapid.

“Brother?” he hears Alphonse cry. “What’s wrong?”

Riza’s voice at Ed’s ear lets out a quiet _shush_ ing noise. “It’s okay, Al. He’ll be okay.”

She slides her hand up to Ed’s head and presses it there, fingers moving just enough to stroke his hair. She feels the moisture on her shoulder and grimaces. Her own pain, guilt for everything over the years, floods back into her veins. She can practically feel Edward’s grief in her own shaking hands, her shallow breath.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Ed. You’re going to be okay.”

Riza leans back and looks at Edward, his eyes still shifted downwards and hair stuck to his wet cheeks. She grabs a blanket that he’d tossed on the floor in his attempts to sleep and wraps it around his shoulders.

“Are you breathing?” she asks gently.

He nods and finally shifts his eyes up to look out the window. Still, the glittering yellow and white lights of the city. Maybe other people are up at this hour having nightmares as well. He can’t decide whether the idea of everyone else dealing with this is depressing or comforting. A long minute of quiet passes, Edward nearly falling back into his restless thoughts again.

“Let’s go get something to eat.”

Edward rests an arm on Riza’s shoulder, hers wrapped around his waist, as they travel over to his wheelchair by the door. He plops down heavily and finally makes eye contact with Riza. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Ed.”

As she pushes him down the hall, Al peeks out of the library door. Riza shoots him with an okay gesture and he nods, closing the door behind him. _Being upset must be hard enough without your little brother around to pester you_ , he thinks. He knows Ed tries impossibly hard to make Al seem like everything’s fine. Not that Al, or anyone else really, falls for it. Might as well let him have a breakdown with someone for a change.

Still, Al worries for Ed. He’d hate it if he knew how much he worries about his older brother.

In the kitchen, Hawkeye kicks out a chair and pushes Edward in the empty spot before grabbing a box of cookies above the fridge. She tears open the package and places it in front of the boy.

He raises his eyebrows, face still bright pink from the tears.

“Cookies are good for the heart. You have no idea how many packages of those I’ve gone through in my worst moments,” she says, face still as usual.

Ed takes a bite and looks back at Riza with a funny look in his eye. “I didn’t peg you for a sad eater, Lieutenant.”

“You only see the work version of me. I have a lot of secrets up my sleeve.”

She stands up and turns away, lighting the stove to start boiling water for tea. Her loose white pajama shirt hangs low on her back, exposing a pink scar creeping up her spine. He squints at it, trying to get a better look, and quickly looks away as soon as Riza turns back around.

“Were you already awake?” Ed asks, shoving another cookie in his mouth.

“Yes. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet.”

His mind reels for a moment, wondering if it’s okay to ask her why. Is that too intrusive? He’s already in her _house_ , he probably shouldn’t be asking -

“What are you thinking about?” Riza asks, taking her hot teapot off the stove. She shoots him a knowing look before pouring the water into two mugs.

“What is that scar?” Ed blurts.

She puts back down the pot and reaches an arm back, gently touching the soft flesh of the old wound. “A burn,” she answers shortly before sitting down with their cups.

As she drinks, she catches Ed’s eyes flicking up again and again with curiosity. “What was your nightmare about?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

“What is your scar from?” he asks again.

She sighs and puts down her mug. “It’s from Colonel Mustang.”

“ _What_?” Edward cries out. “I’m going to _ki –“_

“No, no, I _asked_ him to,” she interrupts. “I wanted him to get rid of an old tattoo.”

Ed lowers himself back down and squints at her, eyebrows furrowed. “I feel like there are other ways to get a tattoo removed. Was it really embarrassing or something?”

“It was alchemic notes and I didn’t want anyone to use them.” She drums her fingers on her thigh.

“Did it hurt?”

She laughs. “Yeah, a little bit.”

“Is that what you were up thinking about?”

She shrugs. “I guess a lot of things can be connected to that tattoo. So in some sort of way, yes. Partially.” She nods toward his cup. “Drink. It’ll help you sleep.”

He finishes his drink in a single gulp and slams it back down dramatically. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“Then you can stay up with me.”

The pair, both barely avoiding painful topics as they progress through their conversations, eventually settle down to the couch in the living room, Ed’s leg propped up on the edge of the couch. His head rests by Riza’s side and hers leans back tiredly on the back of the couch. She closes her eyes as she listens to Edward’s quiet talk.

“I feel like I killed my brother and mother at the same time,” he whispers, eyes tightly shut. His metal hand curls into a tight fist.

“You tried to save your mother, Ed. You were a child - you still _are_ one.”

“Have you ever felt like you’ve ruined _everything_?” he asks, voice rough.

“I gave someone powers that they used to burn people alive and tear down cities. I fought on the wrong side of the Ishvalan war. I understand the feeling.”

“That’s what you were up thinking about?” Ed says, barely a question.

“It’s what I always think about.”

Black Hayate jumps up on the couch and settles on Edwards stomach, curious eyes glued to Edward’s face. He rubs his head absentmindedly and opens his eyes to stare up into the ceiling.

“Is there any way to make it better?”

Riza looks down at the boy. “You can’t go back in time, but you can make amends. That’s all you can do.”

She swipes back Ed’s bangs from his forehead and he closes his eyes at the touch. She grimaces at the thought of _everything_ all over again, then swallows it back down, burning hot in her throat. The thought of Ed and Al in her place in fifteen years is nearly agonizing and she pushes the vision out of her head. The nightmares, the sleeplessness, the hardness she’d forced herself to become. She won’t let that happen to them. She’d be there for them for anything, unlike anyone was really there for her. The only one she could ever actually count on was Mustang. Still though, she feels the pain of guilt, for _allowing_ him his powers when they were young, ache in her bones.

Two kids, just like these two. Completely lost in the big, wide world.

* * *

“Where the hell is she?” Mustang mutters to himself, black boots clicking loudly on the linoleum flooring. When he gets to Hawkeye’s apartment door, he knocks twice before turning his own key in the lock and barging in.

When he enters, he looks around, his eyebrows furrowed. The lieutenant is still knocked out on the couch, a hand resting on Fullmetal’s forehead next to his wound. He’s turned inward, nearly fetal position, his blonde hair flying around his face. And in the corner chair is Alphonse’s large body, a book in his hands.

Mustang clicks the door shut quietly behind him and shoots a quick smile at Al. He leans over on the couch and presses a kiss to the side of Hawkeye’s face. She opens her eyes slowly and gives a small smirk.

“What’re you doing here?” she asks, voice scratchy from sleep.

“There was a meeting this morning.”

Riza springs up, instantly grabbing her hair and tying it into a mess of a knot at the back of her neck, and she begins to dart off to her room when Roy grabs her wrist. “It’s already over; don’t worry about it.”

She sits back down and breathes out heavily. “I didn’t hear my alarm out here,” she says quietly, glancing back down at the boy at her side, then at Alphonse across the room.

Roy sits on the arm of the couch next to her, one of his legs touching hers. He smiles down at her and Riza looks away, face turning pink just enough for him to notice. He looks at the quiet scene again. The red curtains are pulled back just enough to let slivers of yellow morning light slide into the room, illuminating Alphonse’s reading spot. Two little mugs rest on her stained coffee table and several of Riza’s personal books lay open next to a notepad covered in her messy cursive.

He wants to ask her how she slept, how it was with the boys – especially with those eye bags of hers this morning – but stayed quiet so as not to wake Edward. Instead he asks, “Are you okay?”

“We’re going to be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in one night while being sleepy, so let me know your thoughts about it and i might make a longer or better version. also, you can talk to me on twitter @adykera if you're interested :,)


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